These platforms resembled titanic, futuristic rifles adrift in the void—sleek and terrifying, though devoid of any manual triggers for obvious reasons. These were capital-grade weapon systems, possessing enough raw power to inflict enormous damage on celestial bodies across the stars, even if they were only Tier-2 grade technology.

Dense green laser lances lashed out, shrieking through the vacuum. They slammed into the orbital weapon platforms’ shield systems, which were instantly overloaded and shattered by the sheer energy and the localized kinetic force behind the beams. The lances struck the outer shells of these massive structures, and the armor began melting the very instant they made contact.

Even then, the energy and force within the laser lances did not dissipate. They drove deeper, boring through the inner mechanical structures until they struck the weapons’ main power cores. The result was a chain reaction, as the platforms erupted into spectacular, violent balls of flame.

In a single synchronized volley, dozens of these orbital platforms were crushed before they could even cycle their next rounds or fire another shot at the Void Fleet. All that remained of them were glittering shards of scrap metal, raining down toward the planet below. Some of the larger fragments—massive, jagged husks of what used to be super-weapons—had their trajectories set directly toward the Minotaur cities on Planet B-02.

On the surface, the Minotaurs were thrown into a fresh state of panic. Sirens wailed as they were forced to divert their dwindling resources to intercept the falling heaps of metal before their own weaponry could crash down and obliterate their cities.

Back in the void, the nine Destroyers and the two Battlecruisers shifted their focus toward the behemoth space station. An 80-kilometer-wide monstrosity shaped like a massive mushroom, it hung above the planet like a giant, dark umbrella casting a shadow over the world below.

Inside the “Space Mushroom,” the situation had devolved into total and absolute carnage. What was once a thriving hub and planetary port—a place where traders and visitors from across the galaxy first docked their vessels—had been transformed into a death trap in the minutes following the first alarms. Law and order had vanished, replaced by primal terror.

The station’s corridors were choked with a desperate tide of living beings. Minotaurs, Gnomes, Orcs, and a dozen other species were running amok, trampling one another in a frantic dash for survival. Their goal was singular: the massive hangar bays. Thousands of refugees and soldiers alike scrambled toward the docking piers, hoping to board any ship—be it a luxury corvettes , a cargo hauler, or a fighter and frigates —that could carry them away from the impending doom.

They didn’t realize that Athena’s cold gaze was already fixed on those very hangars.

Inside the hangar bays, the situation was even more horrific. The scene was a nightmare of metallic echoes and desperate screams. Thousands of individuals from dozens of different species were sprinting toward their vessels, their voices clashing in a cacophony of terror.

“MOVE! GET THE ENGINES UP AND RUNNING! WE ARE GETTING OUT OF HERE!” roared a member of the Beast Clan. He had the sharp, pointed ears of a fox and a face that sat on the fine line between human and animal. His frame was tall and wiry, built for agility. Using his superior reflexes, he shoved through the thick crowds of terrified people, his eyes fixed on a small freighter at the end of the pier.

Similar scenes were playing out in every docking bay, but many were far more tragic. In the frantic rush, the weak were shown no mercy. People were pushed aside by those stronger than them; many fell to the cold, grated floors. With the bays packed to capacity, those who tripped never stood a chance. They were instantly buried under a stampede of boots and hooves.

The panic had stripped away all empathy. Those rushing forward didn’t even hear the pleas of those beneath them, and even if they did, they chose to ignore the dying in a desperate bid to save their own lives. In this heartless chaos, no one was safe—men, women, and children were crushed alike, their lives snuffed out not by the enemy’s guns, but by the sheer weight of their own collective terror.

Just as the first few ships began to ignite their thrusters, casting a blue-hot glow across the crowded hangars, the Void Fleet’s targeting computers reached 100% lock.

On the bridge of the Antares, a technician reported coldly, “Targets locked. Hangar atmospheric shields are vulnerable. Railgun slugs and high-yield missiles are ready for launch.”

Athena watched the heat signatures of the escaping ships on her screen. To her, they weren’t people; they were just variables being erased.

Meanwhile, many small transport ships and private vessels that were already manned by their crews began lifting off the hangar floors. They completely ignored the frantic orders of the Minotaur officers tasked with controlling the traffic. The roar of hundreds of engines ignited at once, filling the massive bays with a deafening, vibrating thunder.

Ships rose unsteadily, turning their bows toward the massive hangar exits. Those closest to the void surged out first, their thrusters firing with such desperate intensity that the backwash knocked over hundreds of people still standing on the docks.

Inside the cockpits, pilots were driven to madness by the sight of the Void Fleet’s 40 silhouettes looming in the distance. Urged on by their terrified passengers, many pilots engaged their warp drives immediately. They didn’t take the time for proper calculations, nor did they wait to clear the massive gravity well of the 80km-wide space station. It was a suicidal gamble—an act of pure desperation that ignored every law of physics and space travel.

As the first wave of escape ships began to accelerate, their warp systems surged. The space in front of the ships began to compress while the space behind them expanded, creating the bubble necessary for faster-than-light travel.

The pilots’ hands trembled as they slammed the levers forward, praying for a leap into the safety of the void. They didn’t yet realize that the space around them was locked tight—the Void Fleet’s gravity wells were active, turning the exit of the hangar into a wall of distorted space-time that no ship could penetrate.

The ships that were on the verge of breaking the light-speed barrier were violently yanked back into real-space with bone-shattering force! Their systems, never designed to handle such a sudden deceleration, failed to stabilize the vessels or bleed off the massive kinetic energy.

A small line of private frigates was whipped backward like toys caught in a storm. They slammed into a heavy, civilian-class transporter. The intense force caused the transporter’s thick hull to buckle and contract upon itself like a crushed soda can, the screams of those inside silenced instantly by the screeching of twisting metal.

Other ships, similarly ripped from their warp-tunnels, careened wildly into the space station’s outer hull. They struck just tens of meters above the hangar openings. Hulls screeched against the station’s reinforced plating with a sound that could be felt through the very bones of everyone inside. Those with weaker structural integrity collapsed instantly, bursting into internal infernos. The passengers suffered a horrific death they could have never imagined, while their dying vessels gouged deep, jagged scars into the station’s exterior.

A few ships were thrown back directly toward the crowded hangar bays they had just fled. It was only the station’s internal atmospheric shields that prevented them from crashing into the crowds—though the relief was short-lived. The ships disintegrated against the shimmering energy fields, turning into blooming fireballs and raining heaps of molten scrap metal onto the people below.

The “Space Mushroom” was surrounded by a ring of fire and debris. Those still inside watched in horror as their only hope—the warp drive— instantly became a death sentence.

It was a massacre—a tragedy born of ignorance and desperation. Those few survivors on the mangled ships drifting near the hull tried to scream into their radios, warning the vessels still inside the hangars: “DO NOT ENGAGE WARP! IT’S A TRAP!”

But for many, the warning came too late. Some ignored it out of pure panic, but as luck would have it, their time had already run out.

The Void Fleet’s main batteries finally spoke.

From the barrels of the Titan-class Destroyers and the Barracuda-class Battlecruisers, a devastating volley of turbo-class laser weaponry and high-velocity kinetic rounds tore through the void. The sheer force behind these weapons didn’t just stress the space station’s shield systems—it shattered them in a single, overwhelming barrage. The kinetic slugs, traveling at significant fractions of the speed of light, punched through the weakened energy fields and slammed into the outer hull of the “Space Mushroom,” burying themselves deep into the station’s internal structure before detonating.

The hangar bays, Athena’s primary targets, bore the brunt of the devastation.

Energy lances and molten metal projectiles rained into the crowded docking areas. The atmospheric shields hissed and failed, causing an immediate, violent decompression that sucked debris and screaming bodies into the vacuum.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep